Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I The uses of abstraction
- 1 Unfeeling statistics
- 2 Prelude to a battle
- 3 Blackett
- 4 Aircraft versus submarine
- II Meditations on measurement
- III The pleasures of computation
- IV Enigma variations
- V The pleasures of thought
- Appendix 1 Further reading
- Appendix 2 Some notations
- Appendix 3 Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
- Acknowledgements
2 - Prelude to a battle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I The uses of abstraction
- 1 Unfeeling statistics
- 2 Prelude to a battle
- 3 Blackett
- 4 Aircraft versus submarine
- II Meditations on measurement
- III The pleasures of computation
- IV Enigma variations
- V The pleasures of thought
- Appendix 1 Further reading
- Appendix 2 Some notations
- Appendix 3 Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
- Acknowledgements
Summary
The first great submarine war
On 10 April 1917 Admiral Jellicoe, First Sea Lord, commander of a British Navy, which had held undisputed command of the seas for three generations, handed over a memorandum to the naval representative of his new American ally. The memorandum showed the British and neutral shipping losses of the last months: 536000 tons in February, 603 000 tons in March and a predicted 900000 tons in April. The American admiral recalls what followed.
It is expressing it mildly to say that I was surprised by this disclosure.
I was fairly astounded; for I had never imagined anything so terrible. I expressed my consternation to Admiral Jellicoe.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly as though he was discussing the weather and not the future of the British Empire. ‘It is impossible for us to go on with the war if losses like this continue … ’
‘It looks as though the Germans are winning the war,’ I remarked.
‘They will win, unless we can stop these losses — and stop them soon,’ the Admiral replied.
‘Is there no solution for the problem?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely none that we can see now.’
(The quotation above is taken from A. J. Marder's magisterial history From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow on which the whole of this chapter relies.)
The German submarines which produced this disaster were not what we would now call true submarines but were, essentially, submersible torpedo boats.
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- The Pleasures of Counting , pp. 21 - 37Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996